


he jests at scars that never felt a wound

by thesilverarrow



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-08
Updated: 2012-06-08
Packaged: 2017-11-07 06:19:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/427876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesilverarrow/pseuds/thesilverarrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Rory and the Doctor have an afternoon to themselves on the TARDIS, the Doctor becomes intrigued by the simple scars on Rory's body.</p>
            </blockquote>





	he jests at scars that never felt a wound

_Be fond of the man who jests at his scars, if you like; but never believe he is being on the level with you._

 

Giving one's heart to the Doctor was a bit exhausting – if for no other reason than his fondness for rolling around on the TARDIS floor instead of a bed. Tangled in more blankets than were strictly necessary, Rory submitted his body to the Doctor's meticulous attention. As always, it was an exercise in patience, just as likely to be tremendously frustrating as slowly, perfectly arousing.

"And this one?" the Doctor said, kissing a spot on his lower back.

"This one what?"

"You've got a scar here." He kissed the spot again, but his hands were already wandering, palming smooth over the curves of Rory's bare ass and down to his thighs.

Rory wiggled, sighed somewhat impatiently. "Tickles. Seriously."

The Doctor was unruffled. In fact, Rory could feel the Doctor's mouth smiling as it moved up the column of his spine.

Then, murmuring against his skin and, annoyingly, echoing him, the Doctor said, "Seriously. Where did this one come from?"

"I don't know."

"How can you not know? It's on your back."

"Right. It's on my back. We humans, we're not a species with eyes anywhere thereabouts."

"You know, Amy is always perfectly happy to let me take my time examining her."

"I'm sure she is."

"Really, why do you hate this so much?"

"I don't—" He took a gulping breath and then held it, feeling his chest expand tight against the floor of the TARDIS. Maybe he was being a little cranky, but, really, these stories of every childhood injury he ever had… 

"They're not important, these scars, okay?" Rory said after a moment. "They make for boring stories. Of all the things you could want to know about me, you ask about...pea-sized spots that are probably from the chicken pox."

Suddenly, the Doctor's mouth and hands were gone. He flopped down beside him, on his back, and said, "Have you always been this difficult, or has being married to Amy…?"

"Made me a little mad? That's beside the point."

"Look, Rory, they might seem like boring stories to you, but—"

"But nothing. You've seen…galaxies, and—" He promptly shut up when the Doctor sighed loudly. 

Rory was about to roll over, find a way to argue his point or at least distract him from the discussion altogether, when there was suddenly a gangly, mostly-naked Time Lord crouching over him, giving him what he and Amy privately called the Serious Face of Seriousness. Which was less effective than it might've been, what with his messy hair hanging over his face, tickling Rory's forehead, and all.

Rory couldn't help but lean up to kiss him, which the Doctor accepted the way he accepts everything – sincerely, but without for a moment losing sight of his goal. Which was apparently to say something Seriously Serious about Sex With A 900-Year-Old Alien:

"On how many occasions will I be forced, especially naked occasions, to—"

Rory plucked at the Doctor's green striped boxers, which were evidently from some far-distant time or place where people apparently didn't put much effort into getting laid, and said, "Almost."

Predictably, the Doctor stopped and shucked his underwear, but then he picked right back up with his sentence: "—to explain how fascinating I find the smallest details about the universe, literally anything and everything, especially when it involves the two of you."

"I get it," he said, reaching out for the Doctor's half hard cock and having his hand blithely slapped away. "I really do," he added, this time straining up for a kiss, and this time the Doctor pretended to be too distracted to stop him from getting a hand around his cock. He did not at all pretend not to sigh in relief at the contact.

Still, he was carrying on with his monologue: "—because I don't just…hop into bed with every—"

"Oh, as I remember it, there was no hopping, unless it was right out of the door."

Somehow, the Doctor managed to look annoyed, despite the hand on his cock. 

"Well, when one thinks one is about to be snared in one of Amy Pond's ill-advised schemes…"

Rory grinned, pulling him down by the head with his other hand so he could nip at his neck, feel him squirm a little. "…one bloody well surrenders to the inevitable."

"Could we stop, ah, talking in generalities here? I thought—"

Rory's hand stilled, and, as he let the Doctor pull back a bit, pull away, he sighed.

"Christ," Rory murmured. "You're worse than a girl."

"You would be, too, if you lived as long as—"

Rory sat up and snapped, "Didn't we decide you couldn't argue that kind of bleeding nonsense with a person who lived almost 2000 years. I had just as much time to examine my effing self _standing in one effing place_ as you have in all your--"

The Doctor smiled as he put his hand over Rory's mouth, softly, already leaning over him again, kissing him on the forehead.

"Point taken. Again."

"Thank you."

"But _my_ point was, the situation wasn't entirely clear to me. Not at first."

Rory chuckled sardonically. "You thought she talked me into it, and you were trying to give me an out."

The Doctor raised his eyebrows.

Rory continued, "What? You think you're so impossible to read? If you were terrified, it wasn't of Amy, it was of how little you imagined she'd thought things through. But what's funny is she did. I was the one who brought up the idea…" He paused when the Doctor raised his eyebrows again. "…basically…and, anyway, whatever, I was the one who didn't think of the consequences."

"Consequences?" he replied, kissing the hollow of Rory's throat as he worked his way up to his ear.

"Good ones," Rory replied, and he tried and failed not to squirm. "Mostly good. But I'm pretty sure I was the only one who had no idea what I was getting myself into."

"Oh, yes." The Doctor's smile was young – and gently mocking. "Sleeping with men, sleeping with an alien…"

"Having an open marriage."

The Doctor frowned as he sat back on his heels, but a reassuring smile quickly won out. "But it's not really open, Rory. Just a bit…ajar."

"Oh, you think you're funny? Ajar? Everything inside me's been _ajar_ for far too long now. That's the only explanation I can think of for why it seems perfectly reasonable that my wife is shopping for space-age hairspray she knows good and well you won't let her take home on a station orbiting 31st century Venus _by herself_ while I'm supposed to shag your brains out like some kind of therapy."

"I quite like my brains, actually. Can we—"

"Holy Christ, that's the part of that sentence that you take exception to?"

The Doctor frowned again and climbed off of Rory, flopping down beside him and leaning back on his elbows. Then he said in an incredulous tone entirely unconvincing, "Therapy, you say?"

"You know, don't you, that she insists on these ridiculous _boys' days_ when she thinks you're getting too gloomy and stuck inside your head."

Surprisingly, the Doctor didn't argue the point, just paused a moment before he asked, "Why you? Why not her, if she's so…observant?"

"Because she thinks you'll be more likely to tell me things."

"Am I?"

"Usually," he replied with a shrug.

His smile was slow in blooming and not very big, but it was genuine as he said, softly, "I think your wife is a very smart girl."

"Plus, I rather think she enjoys the thought of what we're doing. Or what we would be doing if you weren't being so…Doctor-y."

"Yes, if by _Doctor-y_ you mean perfectly reasonable. You, on the other hand, are refusing to answer simple questions about _pea-sized spots_."

"For Christ's sake, I honestly don't remember about that one. There's no story."

At this, he rolled toward Rory and threw one leg over his, pinning him with his weight just as much as with his earnest glance. "I'm not looking for a three-decker Victorian novel. I'm just curious about what leaves an impression on people. Literally or otherwise. Not having any scars myself—"

"What?"

"Surely you noticed. The TARDIS heals me too quickly to leave a mark. Remember when that enormous bird fairly attacked us on that tiny purple moon?"

"Dinosaur, more like."

"Yes. Well, Amy still has that long scar on the back of her knee, but the gash in my forehead was gone before we even set our new destination. I sometimes wonder if scars are marks of fixed moments in time – you know, the kind that can't change – but I have no way to trace such things through my own life. Lives."

"A person doesn't need scars to figure out what's important. Really, most of the time scars are left by the most insignificant things."

"That's the point. A lot of fixed moments in time are absolutely insignificant on the surface." He opened his mouth to say something else, but he closed it again, apparently thinking better of continuing that line of thought. "Of course, that's actually neither here nor there. The real reason is, I want to understand you better, because you're important to me. I thought by now that I had humans figured out, but then…" 

"…a straight guy and his—"

"Straight?"

"A _mostly_ straight guy and his wife proposition you."

This time, the Doctor's laughter was the kind that made him seem as old as he was –somehow removed, but kindly amused. A bit amazed, too, though, which always made it less annoying. That and the way his hands had a habit of wandering and clutching when he was happy.

"Rory Pond, you and your Amy are far from the most surprising pair to attempt to seduce me. And that you succeeded isn't as novel an occurrence as you might like it to be."

Rory was possessed by the sudden urge to be on top of him, so he grabbed him and rolled him over onto his back, reveling in the way it felt to be pressed close to him again, to feel him growing hard against his hip. Warm skin and, somewhere underneath that slightly heaving chest, a pair of hearts. 

Rory said against his lips, "Good thing we weren't going for shocking or novel."

"Oh?"

In answer, Rory kissed him, deep from the start and hard enough to make him have to steady himself with his hands on the Doctor's neck. But, as the Doctor was doing the same, it was all too easy to let himself be rolled over onto his back and kissed nearly breathless.

When the Doctor pulled out of the kiss, without entirely pulling away from his lips, he murmured, "So what were you going for, hmm?"

"Gah. Do you never turn off your brain?"

The Doctor just snorted at him.

"Normal," Rory said. "We decided you needed something normal."

"Human, you mean?"

"Yeah, I guess so. I mean, you like humanity. So…"

"I see."

"But that's—"

"Fine, Rory. Really."

As if to prove it, he rolled himself off Rory and pulled him on top again. Then he closed his eyes and waited patiently.

"Of course," Rory said with a mock serious face, "we knew it would be very, very hard for you."

"Oh?" the Doctor replied, failing at nonchalance again as he strained his lips up for a kiss Rory denied him. For the moment.

Rory ducked his head and whispered against his adam's apple: "You will never settle down. We know that. It's who you are, and we like who you are, in case you were wondering. Settling makes you twitchy, but you want it, or something like it. If you didn't, you wouldn't want to hear about the time I fell off my bike or the fight I got into with Billy What's-His-Face when I was in grammar school. So we're bringing normal to you." Rory raised his head and looked at him again as he rolled his eyes at himself. "We realize it's a bit like a rock band having its families on tour with them, but, see, we like being the hangers-on."

"Of course, it helps that you not-so-secretly like being on tour."

Rory rolled his eyes again, then he said, "We also like it when you come to our flat on a random Tuesday night and eat reheated tuna casserole and custard and lie on the couch watching the telly with us until the wee hours. We don't even mind that you're gone when we wake up."

"I'm not always gone."

Rory snorts. "In some ways, you're never gone."

"Hmm?"

Instead of answering, Rory begins to move his hips – just enough for a tantalizing slide of skin against skin, some preliminary pressure, something to make the Doctor tip his head back and open his mouth and sigh out all his inquisitiveness, all the questions he would hopefully be willing to give up, for the moment. 

Rory discovered early on that the Doctor rather liked to be taken. His extraordinary patience with Rory's clumsy early attempts had eventually rewarded him with Rory's great care, especially in the preliminaries. He liked to stretch him slowly, one finger at a time until the Doctor's stomach muscles stopped fluttering and he eased back against his hand, asking, wanting. 

Once his inside him, really inside, pressed deep and watching the Doctor's eyes slip shut, it didn't take long for them to establish a rhythm, the kind so familiar it was easy to let go of everything and lose all track of time, lose everything but the sensation of in and out. Slow but hard, Rory thrust inside him with a deliberate, grinding pressure that made the Doctor groan and dig his fingers into Rory's back. He could never get enough of this. It was so different from being inside Amy, but it still felt like this thing he desperately needed, and he never realized how much until his thighs were meeting the Doctor's and feeling them yield and resist, all in the same motion.

He let the Doctor touch himself, mainly because it was easier, but he also liked to watch the man's long fingers pull and twist, pausing over the head on each stroke until he was too far gone to break the rhythm. It was hard for Rory's hips not to speed up, too, and this time he was the one who came first, with a grunt and a desperate gulp of air. When he looked down, the Doctor was watching him intently, stripping his cock until he murmured Rory's name and shot off between them.

Sometimes, even during and after sex, the Doctor badgered a person with questions, like Amy would. But sometimes his tactic was to be as silent as possible, to somehow leave such a void of speech that one had to fill it, and with all the things that need to be said. It would have pissed him off if he hadn't been painfully aware of how often he did the same thing to Amy.

The room was quiet, just the sound of their breathing slowing down again and of the Doctor's fingers running up and down his back. His fingers never stopped moving, but he thought he could feel a questioning pressure over that scar. 

"So, it's like this," Rory said. "Those first adventures with you after the wedding, Amy and me, we got into the habit of lying awake at the end of it all, and we wouldn't go to sleep until we'd told each other every detail we could remember. We always noticed different things."

"Why did you never tell me?"

"Well, you knew it all already, didn't you? We didn't think you'd be terribly interested. And it was just… It was something that was _ours_."

"Oh," he said with an almost imperceptible start that made Rory's gut twist a bit with guilt. Then he nodded. "Okay. I mean, good. That's good."

"Anyway, it became such a habit, we found ourselves doing the same thing back home at the end of a long day of normal life. But we sometimes feel like something's missing. We find ourselves wanting to tell it all to you."

"I would love that, Rory. Really."

"Oh, I'm sure. Getting the car's squeaky brakes fixed. Being puked on by a patient. Did you remember the milk, dear? That kind of thing. They're charming stories. "

"They're your stories."

"That's pretty much how we feel about you, too, you know. You never tell us anything that doesn't belong in a 42nd century audience participation play."

"I tell you the things I remember best."

"Well then, sometime try to remember what the tiny little scar on your lower back is." 

He was only half serious when he said it, but as the words sunk in, he found himself staring into the Doctor's eyes, trying to get him to understand his frustration.

The Doctor seemed to be doing the same thing, but his eyes were closed as he said, "I don't have many tiny little scars."

It was still beyond Rory how he could sometimes feel overprotective of a man who can defy time, but he did. It was all he could do not to squeeze him a little too tight. He settled for pinching his side. 

"Then for Christ's sake, tell me about one of the big ones. Tell me why you tried to avoid coming to Venus."

The Doctor didn't deny it, and he had the good grace to tamp down his shock at Rory's noticing. He simply replied, "It's not an impressive story."

"Well, unless it involves you spending a week on the couch trying not to scratch places you didn't even know could itch while your mother force-feeds you soup and makes you watch her soap operas, then I probably haven't heard it."

"Have I ever told you about the time I called the Venusian President of Agriculture a _randy toad with a persecution complex_?"

"Well, was he?"

"Absolutely."

"Doesn't sound like a big deal."

"Oh, but, you see, it was to him, and he…" The Doctor grimaced and muttered, "Well, he deported me, basically."

"Seriously? Okay, but how many years has it been since President Toad kicked you out?"

"Three hundred, give or take. But apparently, that matters not one tiny bit. Deportation can only be rescinded by the original deporter or his family, and old Randy and his line of progeny have been in the ground for a long, long while."

"Seems like a stupid system."

"Just archaic. When they wrote that statute, they hadn't made first contact, so they couldn't imagine lifespans longer than their own."

"Which is?"

"Something like…thirty-five earth years?"

Rory laughed. "But surely you've changed since then? Several times, I'd wager."

"Aye," he replied, inflecting his voice to sound like Amy. "But not my molecular makeup. If I set foot in one of their larger spaceports, they'll scan me and run me in. I know; I've tried."

"Then why are we here?"

"We've already discussed how impossible it is to say 'no' to Amelia Pond."

He nodded, then something suddenly occurred to him. "Wait." He sat up. "Does she know about the deportation thing?"

"I think so? I don't know."

"Oh," Rory replied. "I do. I'm willing to bet she set us on this destination because it had two things that would keep us from setting foot off the TARDIS with her."

"Intergalactic diplomacy and…?"

"Shopping."

The Doctor just nodded, but then he said, "Of course, if she _does_ know about the ban, clearly that means she's worried about me for something besides Venus."

Finally, it all clicked into place, and Rory was torn between being mightily annoyed and grudgingly thankful. 

"No," Rory said, "it's worse than that. She's not worried about you, she's worried about _me_."

"Ah," the Doctor said, pulling him back down again. "Then I had better do some further investigating, don't you think?"

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a quote from Shakespeare's _Romeo and Juliet_. The epigraph quote is from Pamela Hansford Johnson.


End file.
